This motley array of baseball-cap-wearing butchers does not strike this American as the least bit strange. I’ve no knowledge of the shop in question, but that’s a pretty common look, in my experience.
I have to say the title of that site is f-ing brilliant. And yes, that’s exactly the look of most butchers/meat case workers I see in my typical daily life of never going to a butcher shop. Surely they have case meat sections in the UK? Theoretically a store could eliminate any sort of butchery and sell ONLY what’s in the case which could have come to the store pre-packaged, needing only a price sticker.
I think the reason for the hat varies depending on the situation: sometimes they’re in a situation where hygiene isn’t actually essential (where they’re dealing with pre-packed meats, for instance) but they want something that says “Hi! I’m a butcher! Ask me about meat!”, and other times that just happens to be the hat that management have chosen for them to wear. There are different standard styles of hygiene hat available apart from the trilbys – trucker/baseball caps, boaters, and a wide range of cotton peaked hats.
And they will wear a hairnet, if needed, and I think the guy in that photo is wearing the hat mainly so that he looks less of a berk.
I’m a guy, so make it a nice, dark porter. 
[QUOTE=dangermom]
Sacrilege! Red oak, thank you very much. (You also need pinquito beans, garlic bread, and salad.) Some reasonable instructions.
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Having grown up with Santa Maria style BBQ, I certainly can’t argue with that. (My mother used to sew the canvas bags for Susie-Q’s pinquito beans). I’m in the Seattle area now, so charcoal it is. And I’ve discovered that Seattle is a part of the country where knowledge about grilling/BBQ is… well, I’ll be nice and say “not so sophisticated.” I’ve learned to dumb things down.
Are you from SM or thereabouts? I went to Righetti myself.
Fire GOOD!
<chef hat on>
If hair gets from your head to the food, 99.99999% of the time it’s because the hair fell out at the root, not because it broke off in the middle. Wearing an appropriate hat* will effectively cover most of the area from which your hair sprouts, and therefore hold in place any hairs that may fall out of their follicles.
ETA: Also, long hair, even if a hat is worn, is generally going to also pulled back into a tail, not sticking out on all sides. I used to have long hair, and I took the extra precaution of using styling gel to plaster it all down, since not all of it was long enough to reach the rubber band. The lady cook I work with does the same thing - gel in addition to either a ponytail or bun.
Or other headgear - I actually wear a bandana, though since my head is shaved hair isn’t an issue*; the bandana is mainly there to stop sweat from rolling off my scalp. My current employer doesn’t require any specific head covering (except I wear the stupid mushroom-shaped chef hat when I carve meat on a buffet line, but that’s mainly for appearances) since we’re usually out of sight of the public and we simply need to comply with health regulations, meaning hair is restrained in some way that keeps it out of the food. The health department doesn’t care what the headgear looks like.
**When I had hernia surgery last year, one of the nurses prepping me put a surgical cap on my head with a grin and the words, “just a formality!”
I was in Santa Maria until 2nd grade, when we moved to SLO. I was there until after I graduated from Cal Poly.
Everyone wears baseball caps. It has nothing to do with young people. These days, if you have a job that requires you to wear a uniform-- package delivery, food service, janitorial/maintenance, skilled services, law enforcement, emergency medical services, security, military – there’s a very good chance that the uniform comes with a baseball cap.